Intra-aortic balloons are well known in the art as medical appliances capable of providing assistive pumping for a weak heart. Conventional intra-aortic balloons have been described for example in U.S. Pat. No. 4,016,871 issued Apr. 12, 1977 to the present inventor. Traditionally, intra-aortic balloons, as well as other catheters, were both inserted into a patient and removed therefrom through the use of a surgical procedure. The tedious surgical technique led to the development and adoption of the Seldinger Catheterization Technique which is now a well known and well established procedure in daily use since at least 1976 and involves a percutaneous invasion of the arterial system without resorting to a surgical procedure.
The availability of the Seldinger Technique led to the development of an intra-aortic balloon described in the British Publish Patent Application No. GB 2,037,166 published July 9, 1980 in which a technique is described wherein an intra-aortic balloon is manually twisted to reduce its outer diameter, a vacuum is drawn to retain the intra-aortic balloon in the twisted, reduced diameter state. The twisted intra-aortic balloon is then inserted into the patient percutaneously, employing the Seldinger Technique. After insertion, the vacuum condition is removed to permit use of the balloon.
The above-mentioned design has led to a number of disadvantages in that no specific technique is available for insuring that the intra-aortic balloon has been completely untwisted once it is moved to the operative position. In addition, the need for manual twisting of the balloon complicates the insertion procedure and increases the time required to perform the procedure. Also there is no means for positively assuring that the balloon will be untwisted after insertion. Through the use of the novel technique and apparatus of the present invention, it is possible to eliminate the step of drawing a vacuum in the balloon as is required in the prior art techniques.